Excerpt

Fifteen years ago, the drive
to study retroviruses was rooted principally in the traditional goal of using animal
models to understand human cancer. The historical importance of retroviruses in the
discovery of cancer genes is now widely appreciated, but many of the recent spectacular
revelations about the molecular basis of cancer have occurred in other
venues—such as human genetics, cell signaling, and developmental
biology—rather than virology. Instead, the central goals of retrovirology
today are the treatment and the prevention of AIDS and the use of retroviruses as gene
delivery devices. These goals have only intensified the need to further dissect viral
particles and genomes, understand their modes of replication, and describe host
responses to infection. Such efforts have focused on structural properties of viral
proteins and their assembly; host receptors for retroviruses and their interactions with
envelope proteins; the mechanism of proviral integration; the regulation of viral gene
expression; and various aspects of pathogenesis and the immune response to retroviral
infection.

Not surprisingly, recent efforts to examine these issues have focused largely on the HIVs
and the retroviruses most commonly used to create vectors, the murine leukemia viruses
(MLVs). It is our contention, and an assumption on which this book is built, that a full
understanding of any single retrovirus depends on an appreciation of the common
properties of retroviruses as a class, as well as the unique features of each type.